MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Lovers’: Tale of a Steamy Triangle

Others may boast, but “Lovers” is the real deal. A small-scale Spanish film made with major league passion, it joins a select group of motion pictures that conduct as much heat as the law allows.

Though the lure of smoldering sensuality has sold more theater tickets than anything you can think of, movies rarely deliver on that promise. No amount of unrestrained nudity or strenuous simulations can guarantee drop-dead sexual excitement. For that, an intensity of feeling must be created, which means involving the emotions as much as exposing the flesh.

So, while the exposure in “Lovers” is modest by current Hollywood standards, the fierce erotic charge this film builds up makes “Basic Instinct” look feeble by comparison. Though based on a true story, “Lovers” (at the Music Hall) has the unyielding melodramatic grip of a James M. Cain novel crossbred with the romantic fatalism that is part and parcel of the Spanish cultural tradition.

The time is the 1950s, the place Madrid, the prevailing mood the stultifying conformity and conservatism of the Franco regime, an ethos Paco (Jorge Sanz) and Trini (Maribel Verdu) seem to fit right in with. He is a young about-to-be-discharged soldier, she is his commanding officer’s maid, and they are engaged.

A hard-working, beautiful but unsophisticated girl who looks forward to married life mainly as a chance to cook enormous meals for Paco, Trini is also unyieldingly prim, brusquely dismissing her intended’s timorous sexual advances. For his part, Paco seems rootless and vaguely dissatisfied, quite handsome but emotionally malleable, liable to drift whichever way the strongest wind blows.

Out of the army and looking for a place to live, Paco answers a room-for-rent ad and finds himself face to face with Luisa (Victoria Abril), a hot number in sunglasses and a kimono. A sybaritic, self-indulgent widow who has a weakness for sweets, not to mention stunning young men, Luisa is more than happy to have Paco hanging around.

A few days and several smoldering glances later, the inevitable happens. But Luisa and Paco do more than fall into bed, they become heedless slaves of passion, unable to keep their hands off each other.

Naturally, it is only a matter of time until Trini finds out about the liaison, but after that, neither her reaction nor the ultimate working out of this steamy triangle are quite predictable. And “Lovers’ ” clean, uncluttered script (by Alvaro del Amo, Carlos Perez Merinero and director Vicente Aranda), in which not a word seems misplaced, deftly holds you in suspense.

Aranda, a veteran Spanish director whose work is rarely seen in this country, utilizes exactly the right kind of narrative-driven style here. The focus is totally on telling the story, on nailing every nuance, so that the audience becomes all but mesmerized by a compelling and fatalistic narrative. Both Maribel Verdu and Victoria Abril, named best actress at the Berlin Film Festival and known domestically for starring roles for Pedro Almodovar, have longstanding relationships with Aranda, and that has probably helped them give the kind of involved and convincing performances that make “Lovers” (Times-rated mature) such a success. The emotional power of this meditation on kinds of love and the ends of passion clearly got to everyone, and they have seen to it that it gets to us as well.

‘Lovers’

Victoria Abril: Luisa

Jorge Sanz: Paco

Maribel Verdu: Trini

Released by Aries Film. Director Vicente Aranda. Producer Pedro Costa-Muste. Screenplay Alvaro del Amo, Carlos Perez Merinero, Vicente Aranda. Cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine. Editor Teresa Font. Costumes Nereida Bonmati. Music Jose Nieto. Art director Josep Rosell. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature.